Dearest

by Jacquie Walters

Genres: Horror; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

A new mom in need of help opens her door to her long-estranged mother only to realize she's invited something much darker into her home in this debut novel perfect for fans of Grady Hendrix, Rachel Harrison, and Ashley Audrain.

Release date: September 17, 2024

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 304

Sample

Flora’s nipples are infected.

She didn’t even know nipples could get infected, though she probably should have guessed it given the crusting skin and yellow discharge and sharp intake of breath that accompanies even the softest caress of her loose cotton T-shirt against her bare breasts. But everyone claims this is normal. They say to push through because the first couple of weeks are brutal but then it all “clicks.” So that’s what she’s waiting for. The click.

This morning, after finally admitting that breastfeeding has only gotten harder in the first three weeks of Iris’s life, Flora called the hospital and scheduled a meeting with the lactation consultant. They squeezed her in for noon, which gave her two and a half hours to map out the process of leaving the house. She needed the diaper bag: diapers, wipes, cream, pacifier, pacifier clip, burp cloth, extra outfit (in case of spit-up or blowout—terms for baby accidents tend to indicate a direction of projectile, she is learning), the stroller, the travel sound machine, a muslin blanket, the carrier. She made a checklist on her phone. This was the first time she was leaving the house with Iris alone. Apparently, it was going to take more planning than a goddamn PhD dissertation.

Now, sitting in the lactation lounge, ten minutes into the appointment, Flora is exhausted. And that’s when Genevieve, the sixty-something breastfeeding guru, looks at Flora’s raw, scaly nipples and says, “Those are infected.”

At first, Flora is horrified, but that feeling is quickly surpassed by relief—

does this mean I can stop breastfeeding

—and then that is triumphed by immeasurable guilt.

As if reading her mind, Genevieve coos, “But not to worry. It’s perfectly safe to continue nursing. I’ll put in a prescription for some all-purpose nipple ointment.” She smiles, one front tooth shorter than the other, and latches the baby onto Flora’s left breast. Flora braces herself for the pain, but it doesn’t come. Not even a tugging. Genevieve is a wizard.

Flora’s insides hollow out with the realization that she’s even more of a failure than she thought. She assumed Genevieve would assess the situation, shake her head in sympathy, and admit, Looks like it’ll be formula for the two of you. Iris just won’t take to the breast. But instead, when someone else does it, the baby latches with ease, and Flora barely feels the tiny human sucking life-force from her chest.

When Genevieve weighs Iris after the first feed, she beams with satisfaction. “She took almost two ounces on that side! She’s a great eater.”

Iris has betrayed her—even if she is only a three-week-old baby, she has committed treason. Before, this was something they were having trouble figuring out together. Now it’s very clearly a Flora problem. Iris’s instincts have kicked in just fine. It’s only Flora’s that are still missing in action.

Genevieve explains that no amount of pain is normal, despite what people say. Flora thinks about all the mothers who insist it gets better after the initial weeks, after the nipples “toughen up.” She wonders what other helpful motherhood tidbits are actually just lies.

“Anyone else at home? A partner?” Genevieve asks.

Flora shakes her head. “My husband is deployed. He’ll be back in a couple of weeks.”

“That must be tough.”

Flora adopts a dismissive tone. “Oh, it’s not so bad. I’m used to it,” she says, which is half-true, since this is her husband, Connor’s, third deployment. But she has to admit it’s different this time. Before, she would miss Connor, of course, but it was more like a craving. Like being deprived of chocolate. But as a single parent, not having Connor is like being deprived of a limb. She’s desperate for him to get home.

Genevieve cradles Iris and holds up her little fists. “See how her fingers are balled up? That means she’s still hungry. Would you like to try latching her on the other side?”

It’s a fair question, but Flora doesn’t want to try. She wants to fold Genevieve up into the diaper bag and take her home.

“Sure,” Flora says, awkwardly pulling Iris toward her chest.

Flora does exactly as Genevieve has instructed. Exactly as the dozens of YouTube videos have directed. Exactly as she learned in the online breastfeeding class she took before Iris was born.

And still, her toes curl in her worn tennis shoes the second Iris clamps on with her X-Acto knife lips.

“That looks great,” Genevieve says. “Does that feel better?”

“Much better,” Flora lies, because she refuses to confess that she is a total, utter failure at something that should come so naturally. And if this is a challenge, what else does motherhood have in store for her?

As Iris sleeps in the living room, Flora tries to decipher the smudged Sharpie written on the foil-wrapped chicken potpie she found in the freezer. Her stepmother, Esther, prepared some meals before she and Flora’s father left last week. It has only been five days, but Flora has already worked her way through them all. This potpie is the last remaining semi-nutritious food item in the house.

She was thirty-eight weeks pregnant when she went to Labor and Delivery with a bad headache. Three hours later, they were prepping her for induction. Her blood pressure was elevated, and they didn’t want to take any risks.

Her dad, Michael, and Esther arrived the next morning with gifts in tow for the nurses. That was classic Esther; they were beautiful woven baskets full of snacks and lip balms and comfy socks, with thick, delicate ribbon tied artfully around the handles. Esther is a Quintessential Mom. She’s that woman in Hamburger Helper commercials who makes people think, Nobody is that domestic. But Esther is.

“You are just the bravest person I know, Flora,” she said as the anesthesiologist poked Flora’s back for the fourth time in an attempt to place the epidural. “If my husband hadn’t been there when I gave birth—well, he might not have been around much after that, either! I might’ve had to kick him out!” She laughed, crinkles smiling at the corners of her eyes.

Flora knew her stepmother was trying to be playful, but Flora was twenty-nine hours into labor and hadn’t slept in two days. The joke triggered a fierce protectiveness in her to defend her hardworking husband. Plus, someone was threading a small tube under her skin and up her spine and she thought she might puke.

“It’s not like Connor has a choice,” she said, wincing as the anesthesiologist pressed. Then, to the doctor: “I feel that on the right. On the right. Ouch!”

He pulled the tube out again. “Maybe we hold off on the conversation for now,” he said, primarily to Esther.

“Oh, yes, sorry,” she said, her thin fingers finding the ends of her long white hair and caressing them compulsively. Then, quickly, under her breath: “Of course Connor doesn’t have a choice, sweetie. That’s not what I meant. I know he’d be here if he weren’t deployed.” Flora responded with a half-hearted smile and felt guilty for sucking Esther into her sleep-deprived, crabby vortex.

Her father and Esther stayed at the house for two weeks after Iris’s birth, cleaning dishes, prepping meals, and doing laundry. The real shock came after they left, when Flora was on her own. How could they possibly leave her with this perfect human specimen whose literal survival depended on her and her alone?

“We’re just a phone call away,” her dad said as they pulled out of the driveway on their last day.

yeah and a three-hour drive

Flora is now five days into her solo-parenting journey. The house feels hollow, like a termite-infested log. She has the sensation that if she screamed loud enough, the walls would collapse. Of course it is quieter without her father and Esther here. But it’s something more than that. Flora spent nearly her entire pregnancy in this house alone, and it didn’t feel as empty then as it does now.

When she was pregnant, the house was fattened up with hopes and plans and chores and preparations. Now that Iris has arrived and the anticipation has deflated, so, too, has the air that Flora breathes. Everything she waited for is here. And since she is no longer preoccupied with the promise of the future, she is highly attuned to the now, which feels somehow two-dimensional in comparison to the three-dimensional world she had imagined.

Flora preheats the oven for the chicken potpie and thinks about Connor. Between the two of them, he is the one with any semblance of talent in the kitchen. Yet another example of how things would be easier if he were here.

Something scuttles behind a half-filled bag of rice Flora has left on the counter. She moves the bag, and a fat black bug shimmies himself along the grout line to safety. This is the third beetle she has seen in as many days, but she punts any fears of an infestation to the back of her mind. Under normal circumstances, she’d have called the exterminator at the first sighting, but she does not have the mental capacity to deal with that right now.

Instead, she wraps a paper towel around her index finger and stalks the beetle as he pauses just beside the oven. If he disappears down the crack between the appliance and the counter, she’ll lose him. She swoops in and almost misses—he reacts quickly—but she’s faster. She presses her finger into his crunchy body, popping him like bubble wrapping. The sensation is satisfying.

She wipes away his splattered remains just as the oven beeps.

Flora sits in the home office for her regularly scheduled video visit with Connor. In another era, she would have gotten done up for the chat with her husband, or at least brushed her hair and rubbed on tinted lip balm. But today, she’s rocking loose cheetah-print sweats with an oversized red cotton top. Spit-up and milk have stained both items of clothing—along with everything else she owns. In many cases, she doesn’t know where the spit-up ends and the milk begins.

“I wish your dad could have stayed longer,” Connor says, waving to a fellow soldier just offscreen. He is planted in front of a computer in the Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Tent. Flora doesn’t know where in the world he is, and while that would normally bother her, she is so unmoored in her own body these days that it is oddly relatable. She’s not the only buoy bobbing in the endless ocean.

“Well, he was here for two weeks…” she says.

“My mom feels so bad she can’t be there,” he continues, “but since Dad’s knee surgery got bumped up, and she had to push the trip, she—”

“It’s fine, really, she shouldn’t feel bad. I’ll send her a text.”

The video feed skips, and she’s not sure Connor has heard her. But then his voice comes through sharper than before. “Do you want to hire someone?”

“He asked as if we had the money,” Flora quips—then feels guilty for being dismissive. “It’s fine, really. You’re home in a couple of weeks. It would take me longer than that to find someone. Plus, I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

Connor nods and smiles, stretching the scar that runs from his upper lip to his nose. He was born with it: a result of something that happened in the womb. His dark brows are thick and harsh, a stark contrast to the still-boyish cheeks that redden the second he has a sip of alcohol.

He runs his hand through his hair, dipping his head forward and scratching at the crown. A uniquely Connor move. He did it the day they met at a hole-in-the-wall bar where they were gathered for their alma mater’s basketball game. He did it the day they bought this house in Bennington, Vermont, knowing it was a stretch for their budget. And he did it the day she found out she was pregnant.

“Guess what, chicken butt?” she’d said as she flashed the tiny stick with two blue lines. She was using the tests that had come with the ovulation sticks, so they were much smaller than what she had seen in movies. This one was barely longer than a toothpick. And yet, it somehow seemed unwieldy, this tiny thing that held so much significance.

“So this is happening,” he’d said, eyes wide. And she’d repeated the words as she climbed into bed next to him, where he had just woken up and was scrolling on his phone. She nuzzled her head in between his shoulder and neck: a spot that had been carved out especially for her, like stone weathered by rain and wind until smooth.

Their master bedroom had been largely unfurnished then; the purchase of the house had overshadowed their ability to buy things to fill it. This meant that the house often emitted an eerie feeling, like the space didn’t yet know itself. But on this day, that unknowing presented hope. A new beginning. The space had not yet been defined because the life that was going to define it had only just sprung into existence.

“Flora?” Connor’s voice from the computer pulls her back to the now. She sees him squint at the screen. “Can you hear me?” Flora fidgets in the old office chair, whose wheels catch as she tries to move it.

“Sorry, got a little lost there,” she says to her husband. “I’m tired.”

“Is Iris sleeping at all?”

Flora shrugs and sticks out her bottom lip. “I mean… yes? But I’m realizing even the best-sleeping newborn is still exhausting. I’m up every two or three hours at night. Oh, and the biggest news: my nipples are infected.”

“Jesus.”

“I picked up some cream. But that’s probably the last time I’m leaving the house until you get home. I went to the hospital to meet with the lactation lady, and I forgot a diaper for Iris. I brought a diaper bag and no diapers.”

Connor shrugs slightly. “Yeah, but it’s the hospital. They had diapers, right?”

He doesn’t get it. He didn’t feel the intense shame that Flora felt. Like she was outing herself on the spot: I’m so ill prepared for motherhood, I can’t even remember a diaper! The very first thing on her apparently useless iPhone checklist.

Connor holds up his finger for Flora to wait a second. Someone offscreen has requested his attention. Flora stares at the space behind her husband, which offers few clues about his day-to-day life. The large white tent billows in and out to his right. It must be windy outside. Behind him, a natural wooden bookcase is stuffed with colorful worn paperbacks, and next to that is a cheap metal shelf holding a stack of board games. She wonders if he has played any of them. If any of their pieces are missing.

“Sorry about that,” Connor says, returning to her. “There’s a line, so I should probably let one of the other guys on here.” He pauses and gives her a sincere look. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

She could break down right now, she really could. She’s on that edge of exhaustion, where tears come easily and it’s hard to not see everything through a dark lens. But telling this to her husband, who is tens of thousands of miles away with no option to return home early, would only stress him out. And he has a job that requires him to be focused. So instead, she says, “I’m good. I promise.”

“I wish I was there to help you,” he replies, and she knows he means it; his fierce green eyes have a way of shining when he is earnest. “I feel useless over here.”

“Well, you are”—she smiles—“but you’ll make up for it when you’re home.”

He leans into the camera, largely blocking the shelves behind from view, and raises an eyebrow. “Oh, I will? Sounds like a plan.”

Flora can’t help but laugh. A deep belly laugh. “Just to be clear, you think I’m asking you to have sex with me? That’s how you think I want to be repaid for a month of no sleep?”

“Oh, is that—I misread—is that just totally off the table?”

Flora tilts her head to the side. “I’m still in diapers, man. Literal diapers.”

“Well, hey,” he jokes, “next time lend Iris one when she needs it, will ya?”

This sends them both howling, and her heart feels full.

“Hold on a minute,” Flora says when she has caught her breath, “you’re not laughing at me wearing diapers, right? I know you don’t find that funny.”

Connor holds up his hands in innocence, but his eyes bulge wide. “Of course not.” Then a sneaky smile sprouts on his face, and Flora explodes playfully.

“You dick! I spent thirty-six hours in labor with your child—”

“I said nothing!”

“—and am still bleeding three weeks later!”

She flicks him off as he succumbs to another fit of laughter. Flora smiles. She hasn’t felt this light since Iris was born. And then, as if merely thinking about her daughter could wake her from sleep, Flora hears Iris cry in the other room. “I’m being summoned,” she says, then points to her breasts, where two small blooms of milk are forming on her shirt. “Isn’t that fun?”

“You’re leaking? Damn. That baby’s got a hold on you.”

“She does,” Flora says. “She really does.”

Flora is so in love—and also so, so tired.

She doesn’t know the last time she slept for longer than a stretch of two hours. Iris disrupted her slumber long before she arrived three weeks ago. Insomnia was one of Flora’s earliest symptoms.

no one should glamorize pregnancy

It’s a goddamn miracle how the female body works, but it certainly doesn’t glow while performing its magic. At least, not in Flora’s experience.

The breast pump suck suck sucks while she sits stiffly, four pillows stacked behind her so that she cannot lean back and lose suction or, worse, leak milk. She is trying exclusive pumping, something she read about online that will allow Iris to get Flora’s milk without shredding her nipples in the process. But Flora’s lower back already aches from sitting stick straight on the too-soft cushion beneath her. She doesn’t know where else in the house she could set up with the milk-extracting machine and all its accoutrements. Bottles, tops, tubing, back-flow protectors, connectors, flanges. Flanges. What a funny word. One that Flora didn’t even know until a few days ago. But now that sterile plastic tool has become an essential part of her universe.

She looks around the living room, whose empty spaces echo the whining of the pump. It would be impossible to know the time of day without a clock. Outside, the sky is all clouds, dark blues and sad grays. Little light comes in through the windows, giving the furniture around her a dusty, muted quality. It’s unnerving. Like a calm before the storm—which, rife with anxiety about the coming unknown, really isn’t a calm at all.

Flora is no stranger to loneliness. In some ways, the feeling is so familiar that it could almost be mistaken for comfort. She was trained from her earliest days. But age has, ironically, deprived her of her strongest coping mechanisms. The last time she felt this alone, she was young enough to still have her imaginary friend, Zephie. It has been a long time since Flora even thought about her, but Zephie had kept Flora company from her toddler years into childhood. They would read books on the couch or cuddle in bed after a bad dream. Zephie had always been a kind of anchor for Flora.

Like one time, when Flora was four years old, she’d gotten separated from her mother in the mall. She’d stepped into the flow of foot traffic and become overwhelmed by shoes clacking on the shiny floor, voices echoing up to the high ceiling above, competing radio stations blasting from nearby stores. The world roared. Loud, so loud, just like it did on the nights she couldn’t sleep, those late hours when the Night Hag came.

Standing in that mall, overstimulated and scared, she’d started to go under. And that’s when she’d felt small fingers slip into her own. It was Zephie, her thin smile beaming right when Flora needed it most. As soon as her friend appeared, the world slowly came back into focus. And that’s when Flora saw a blob of bright coral far ahead, just inside the doors of a department store. Her mother.

“Mamma!” Flora cried out, zigzagging with Zephie through the bustling crowd and finally lunging for her mom, who was spinning a glass case of silver earrings. “I was lost! You lost me!” Flora shouted.

Her mother looked around self-consciously before kneeling to Flora’s level. “You don’t look lost to me,” she said, smiling and brushing a strand of Flora’s hair behind her ear. “What could it have been, five minutes?”

Flora knew exactly how long it had been. She had just learned to tell time in school. She was without her mother for nearly half an hour.

Later, when Flora told her father what had happened, she saw something li. . .